I have 'absolute right' to do that

Former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta called Trump a "loose cannon" Tuesday morning in an appearance on CNN. 'Even people who have built up reputations for integrity over a lifetime of public service, they risk squandering it in this administration, ' " Schmidt said.

The Times said it did not know if Trump "wittingly" revealed the secrets. "The White House should offer a further accounting of the incident to the legislative branch".

According to officials, the information had been supplied by a United States ally - identified by some media outlets as Israel - in the fight against the militant group. Any country that shares intelligence with American officials "could decide it can't trust the United States with information, or worse, that it can't trust the president of the United States with information", said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster says no intelligence sources or methods were discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly.

What is remarkable about this is that reports in the Israeli press from January said that United States intelligence officials had warned their Israeli counterparts about sharing intelligence with President Trump because of fears he might share such intelligence with Russian Federation.

When he was pressed about when the decision was made to share the information - reportedly details of an Isis threat to use explosives in laptops - he said: "He made the decision in the context of the conversation, which was wholly appropriate".

Air Force Col. James Waurishuk (ret.), a former intelligence officer who previously served on the National Security Council, told TheDCNF, "the greater damage is the leaks coming out and the leaks compounded by the stories, such as the Washington Post, for political reasons".

Putin's statement was followed up by Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov who clarified that "there was no audio recording of the Trump-Lavrov meeting, and the only form of record available was a transcript". He said he wanted to share the information with Russian Federation to encourage that country to step up its fight against ISIS, and he repeated that idea later today at the White House.

Last week, Trump threw his administration into turmoil by taking the nearly unprecedented step of firing his Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey.

As it was reported that Israel was the source of the information about an Isis terror plot that Mr Trump passed to the Russian Foreign Minister, the White House tried to insist the President had every right to act as he did.

"That conversation was wholly appropriate to the conversation, and I think wholly appropriate what the expectations are of our intelligence partners", McMaster said, adding he was "not sure what conversations have been held" with foreign partners since the story broke. This time around, the Post reported, the intelligence came from a U.S. ally that hadn't authorized Washington to share it, a development that could shatter essential trust for intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation. The first two stops are due to be Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Doug Andres, a spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, said the speaker was looking for "a full explanation of the facts from the administration".